More than 3,000 cattle raisers converged on the city of Nantes January 12 to demand adequate testing material for "mad cow" disease be supplied to slaughterhouses. The farmers were attacked by riot police with tear gas grenades. The same day, 600 farmers drove their tractors to Amiens and burned in effigy Jean Glavany, the agriculture minister. In the Vosges Mountains in eastern France, 40 farmers drove their cattle to the Prefecture, the center of government administration, at Epinal and set up camp for several days. In Guéret, in central France, 300 cattle raisers released their calves in the local headquarters of the agriculture ministry. In Brittany, 100 farmers with their tractors blocked the entrance to one of France's largest slaughterhouses in the town of Vitré. And in Bourges, 80 angry farmers dumped a tractor load of manure at the entrance to the Prefecture.

Sales of beef in Europe have dropped by 27 percent since October but the drop has been more than 40 percent in France and Germany. European beef prices have dropped by 26 percent as cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), otherwise known as mad cow disease, have shown up across the continent.

In an interview, cattle raiser Romain Blanchet explained that the 180 hectares he farms in partnership with a couple in Lower Normandy is seriously threatened. If even one of his 300 head of cattle gets BSE the entire herd will be destroyed. The local slaughterhouse has been partially closed by the BSE crisis and will not take the 120 young bull calves Blanchet has ready for market. The Italian government has banned French cattle imports, thus cutting off 45 percent of the market for bull calves raised in the nearby Loire River valley.

"I can't be sure what was in the animal feed I purchased after 1996," he said, noting the year imports from Britain of meat and bone meal often infected with BSE were banned by the French government. It has subsequently been revealed that the tainted feed was sold to farmers in France and Germany anyway. "The feed companies lied," Blanchet said. "There was massive fraud and infected meal was mixed in with the rest. The government did nothing because the meal was cheap."

A European Union ruling allows only cows tested for BSE to be accepted at slaughterhouses. But there are not enough test kits available so the companies are running the slaughterhouses at half capacity, laying off 10 percent of meatpacking workers. This has forced farmers such as Blanchet to continue to feed their cattle at a loss. In Brittany alone, 42,000 head of cattle are awaiting slaughter at a cost to the farmers of some 100 million francs (1 franc=US 14 cents).

As the new tests become available, Blanchet thinks the government should revise its policy of slaughtering whole herds if only one case of BSE is detected. He said some of his friends have switched to "bio farming" where farmers grow their own feed. Such farms can only raise one-third the number of cows per hectare, something only larger farmers can afford to do. "If 'intensive farming' is abandoned for 'bio farming', what will be the consequences for society?" Blanchet asked. "Will the average person still be able to afford to eat meat?"

Unless tested for BSE, an estimated 2 million head of cattle will be slaughtered and their carcasses destroyed. Several countries have lifted their ban on French beef, including Italy. However, new embargoes on European beef have been announced by Japan, New Zealand, and Australia.  
 
Crisis in Germany
The most serious political repercussions of the current "mad cow" crisis have been in Germany. After denying for years that there were any risks of BSE in the country, the government finally admitted to a first case on November 24. Since then there have been about two cases a week. As the crisis deepened Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke, a member of the Social Democratic Party, and Andrea Fischer, the health minister and member of the Green Party, resigned January 10.

David Byrne, the European Commissioner of Health and Consumer Protection, has warned the German government in a confidential letter made public by the German weekly Bild am Sonntag that the BSE epidemic just starting in the country "may be comparable in size to the epidemic in Great Britain," where almost 180,000 cases of BSE have already been diagnosed.

"We will strike hard," announced Josef Miller, the Bavarian Agricultural Minister, at a shutdown animal feed factory. Tests had shown that the factory's feed had traces of meat and bone meal banned by the European Union since December.

The German government has also announced a voluntary program to purchase and slaughter 400,000 cows more than 30 months old and destroy the carcasses. The European Union will finance 70 percent of the operation. Farmers will receive 520 euros per cow, about 30 euros less than the current market value (1 euro=US 94 cents). The president of the German Agricultural Federation, Gerd Sonnleitner, welcomed the program as a necessary measure to protect the consumer and to support the price of beef on the market.

Farmers in Germany have been sharply critical, however, of the government's policy, as in France, of destroying an entire herd where even one cow has been infected by BSE. One thousand farmers demonstrated in Celle in northern Germany against the slaughter of cows on a farm in Lower Saxony. Hundreds more demonstrated in Westerheim when 143 cows were slaughtered on a farm in Bavaria. Five hundred more demonstrated against the new policy in Nabburg in Bavaria with coffins and signs saying, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder is "a peasant killer."

Wilhelm Niemeyer, vice president of the German Agricultural Federation, threatened the government with nationwide demonstrations. "If nothing is done quickly," he said on national television, "we will soon see cows, calves, and bulls roaming freely on the roads and highways. Chancellor [Schröder] has nailed farmers to the wall as if the farmers were responsible for BSE."

Schröder, in defense of his policies, has called for "an alliance between consumers and sincere farmers," implying that most farmers were not "sincere." "We want to have safe food thanks to agriculture which is more natural and respectful of the environment. Farmers should produce what consumers want and not what they think they can dump on the market," he said. "It is in the interests of the farmers themselves if they want to survive." Schröder named Green Party vice president Renate Künast to replace the former agriculture minister. The ministry was renamed the Ministry of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture.

Künast immediately proclaimed that the BSE crisis was the "Chernobyl of agriculture" and said that "people are willing to pay more for safe food." Her fellow Green Party member, Andrea Fischer, the former health minister, has repeatedly blamed "the industrialized farming economy" for BSE, lumping together working farmers and capitalist agricultural enterprises.  
 
 
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